1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an element guide in an apparatus for automatically manufacturing a succession of slide fasteners with flies sewn thereto.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Various apparatus have been put to use for automatically manufacturing slide fasteners successively. However, no apparatus has been proposed or employed in the art for automatically manufacturing slide fasteners with flies attached thereto.
It has been customary practice to use slide fasteners with flies stitched thereto in advance for increased efficiency when slide fasteners are to be attached to a closing at the front of men's trousers. The fly is sewn to one of the stringer tapes longitudinally along a transversely substantially central line, the fly being wider than the slide fastener. At the time of such sewing on the slide fastener, the fly is folded on itself about the stitching and then sewn to the trousers. In the production of slide fasteners with flies, if a fly were to be attached to a finished slide fastener, then difficulty would arise in sewing the fly to the slide fastener on a sewing machine due to the presence of a slider on the slide fastener. Therefore, it is more advantageous to sew flies to a slide fastener chain in advance, and then to process the slide fastener chain into individual finished slide fasteners. However, since flies have already been sewn to the slide fastener chain, the fly has to be folded on itself before a slider is mounted on the chain, and the folded fly presents an increased thickness on one side of the chain, which has prevented the chain from being accurately fed along. The folded fly attached to one of stringer tapes renders the tapes different in rigidity, making it less reliable to thread the tape edges through the slider. For accurately feeding the chain, it would be possible to drive the chain with a feed roller assembly engaging the row of coupling elements only. However, the slider would interfere with the feed roller assembly. For the reasons described above, only manually operated apparatus have been available in the past for manufacturing slide fasteners with flies.